What’s in a name?

I often get asked about the origins of the word ‘Rippleseed’. It is a made up word, of course. It captures the essence of what I do and what I believe actually happens in organisations.

If I think over my professional life, the analogy with seeds and ripples becomes apparent in what I have done. I have always gone looking for green fields to help set up new businesses, new markets, new functions, and new practices. Seeding new ideas and watching them grow into meaningful solutions to small and big problems. Helping stir still waters of outmoded thinking, seeing the ripples inject fresh air into strategies, processes, practices, products, behaviours. Why do I do it? Because it makes sense –and – it feels good to play a part in the evolution of an organisation so it can adapt to any changing competitive, socio-political, technological, industry or market environments.

Having always worked in global roles, I had perfect visibility of the entire business. A unique opportunity to see how the organisation worked and behaved in times of major change. One particular observation stands out for me: success is determined by how well its ‘ecosystem’ is working at the time. The pace and direction of any transformation is decided by the quality of the connections, interdependencies, partnerships ; the quality of collaboration between different people and parts of the organisation and by the quality of individual creativity, ingenuity and commitment. If you drop a major change in one area, it should ripple through the entire organisation , creating waves in other functions, its way of working and in its culture. Identifying and ‘brokering’ those connections is part of change management.

Change management is more than plans, projects, processes, tools and techniques – the rational, technical stuff. It is also about changing behaviours, outlooks and mindsets – the emotional stuff. My experience tells me that it is the ripple effect of shared values, ideas, stories, best practices and collaboration that creates the emotional connection with change.

It was such thoughts that I shared with FitDesign in my brief to them about naming. They came up with a few great ideas. Out of those, I felt Rippleseed fits me perfectly.